While my personal travel went on the back-burner the first half of this year I have been traveling a lot for work (Beth and I are moving to Denver, Colorado soon! More on that later!). A couple of these work trips were to the Reno, Nevada area and I couldn’t resist not visiting beautiful Lake Tahoe nearby and do some hiking. I was able to get in a couple hikes after work and before sunset while visiting the Reno area. Sunset was around 8:30 PM so I had just about 2 hours to get some hiking in before dark.

In October, Beth and I decided to do a long weekend trip to Puerto Vallarta. This was Beth’s fall break and it was a perfect excuse for a beach vacation. We stayed 4 nights at the Sheraton Bunganvillas near downtown Puerto Vallarta. A full review on that hotel later but we loved our stay there. While our main purpose was to be beach bums, we had one hike on our itinerary which from Boca de Tomatlan to Las Animas beach, picture above!

While everyone is saying good riddance to 2016 because of all the celebrity deaths, 2016 was one my best years of my life! First and foremost I got married to my best friend, Beth, this summer, it was an amazing wedding with friends and family. On top of getting married it was by far the best travel year I have ever had with many of my travel goals (bucket list) being hit. Miles and points allowed us to travel to many of the destinations in 2016 that we could not have typically afforded otherwise.

While in Dubrovnik, Croatia, one of our favorite days was our day trip up north to Ston and Prapratno Beach. Ston is home to the largest intact wall in Europe making for a nice piece of trivia, while Prapratno Beach was the most beautiful beach we visited on our entire honeymoon on points. While Dubrovnik is an amazing place to begin with, it is also a perfect spot to base yourself for day trips. From our hotel, the Sheraton Dubrovnik, we first day tripped to the awe-inspiring Kotor, Montenegro, and our second one up to Ston, Croatia. Both were amazing.

Day Trip to Montenegro

We absolutely loved our stay at the Sheraton Dubrovnik as part of our long honeymoon. The Sheraton was a perfect base for exploring all of southern Croatia aka Dalmatia, Montenegro, and even Bosnia and Herzegovina. We didn’t have enough time to go into Bosnia, but we did head to Montenegro on a day trip and really enjoyed it!

From Dubrovnik it was a short 1.5 hour drive to get to Kotor, Montenegro. The drive itself was worth it. Starting off from Dubrovnik you head south past the airport and then to the Montenegro border. There is a passport and green card (car insurance) check. Make sure when renting your car in Croatia to get the green card if you plan on visiting any of the bordering countries as it is required.

After the border crossing we drove through the industrial town of Herceg Novi which was not the prettiest area but once past that the beautiful Kotor Bay opens up. The drive is amazing hugging the water with the beautiful views of the surrounding mountains. The whole bay is enclosed by the mountains so it is very unique.